All these have the newer 4.4 Linux Kernel , nouveau 1.3.1 , Xorg 2.1.18 and the mesa with 3D acceleration enabled.

Hope this post helps others , but now I'm going to reinstall OS X 10.5.8 to try the new TenFourFox
Also this inspired me to pick up on my C++ knowledge of 25 years ago, Tito910 I'm going to checkout your patches because I can surely learn from them.

The nouveau.ko for Ubuntu Mate 16.04.1 LTS turns out to be 64Mb so even as a ZIP of 23Mb it's too big thus here it is via Dropbox

Just trying different Debian/Ubuntu installs on similar Nvidia machines and trying to find a way to match all my criteria including getting screen brightness to work.

I should note that I've installed FreeBSD which has a working mesa and brightness control up to completely switching the screen off , off course on FreeBSD PPC is Tier-2 so you have to compile everything from source.

On OpenBSD brightness also works but you cannot switch off the screen, just dim it ( like 10% brightness in OS X ).

What do you guys think the best/newest linux OS is for PPC with the least amount of issues? I may want to give it a shot and see how it compares to Leopard in a usability aspect.

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In my opinion, probably Ubuntu MATE or Lubuntu. But if you wanna tweak your setup a bit more/get more speed out of your hardware, I would go with Debian, although it can be tricky to setup. It's really your hardware that matters though, some work great with PowerPC Linux but some are rather fiddly (such as my Mobility 9700, or the FX5200).

What do you guys think the best/newest linux OS is for PPC with the least amount of issues? I may want to give it a shot and see how it compares to Leopard in a usability aspect.

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I've sure you've come across this guide already – it makes installing Debian a breeze and walks you through every step. If you have a laptop without the problematic graphics cards it should be relatively easy.

I do a little twist to the guide since I prefer xfce to open box so I just download the xfce install disks – it gets put on the system by default and then I just concentrate on tweaks to make it lean. If you want tweakability and power of Debian combined with relative ease, you can just download the particular DE specific images and save yourself some work.

Debian is the most leanest in system resources and the most tweakable , but has the older Linux kernel and probably no 3D acceleration support in mesa .

Lubuntu is moderate and lightweight has a newer Linux kernel and a newer mesa .

Ubuntu Mate also has the newer Linux kernel , the most recent mesa which supports Nvidia FX5200 3D acceleration and also for certain Radeon models but uses more resources and leaves a bigger installation footprint.

In general ATI Radeon cards have the better support , Nvidia is now forced to use nouveau which can have it's advantages or disavantages.

Just a quick update on my progress , got around the installation bug on Debian Testing Daily by manualling partitioning
and realized that it has the same Linux kernel, Xorg, nouveau , Qupzilla versions as Ubuntu Mate 16.04 LTS.

On the Youtube HTML5 feedback, looks like nouveau really stresses the CPU with the newer mesa and 3d acceleration enabled.

Firefox ESR (45/47) doesn't even load a 360p video, it just keeps loading and CPU is at 91% .

Qupzilla 1.8.9 is a bit leanier on CPU but also goes into the 80-90% CPU usage when playing a 360p video which stutters even when I let it pre-buffer.

But the revelation of this day : xombrero , also a HTML5 browser starts Youtube 360p video playback instantly , no stuttering.

Just a quick update on my progress , got around the installation bug on Debian Testing Daily by manualling partitioning
and realized that it has the same Linux kernel, Xorg, nouveau , Qupzilla versions as Ubuntu Mate 16.04 LTS.

On the Youtube HTML5 feedback, looks like nouveau really stresses the CPU with the newer mesa and 3d acceleration enabled.

Firefox ESR (45/47) doesn't even load a 360p video, it just keeps loading and CPU is at 91% .

Qupzilla 1.8.9 is a bit leanier on CPU but also goes into the 80-90% CPU usage when playing a 360p video which stutters even when I let it pre-buffer.

But the revelation of this day : xombrero , also a HTML5 browser starts Youtube 360p video playback instantly , no stuttering.

Next browser to check Luakit.

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It's good that at least once browser seems to work. Do you have 3D acceleration enabled systemwide? Does it strain the CPU as well on idle just rendering the rest of the system/desktop/etc?

It's good that at least once browser seems to work. Do you have 3D acceleration enabled systemwide? Does it strain the CPU as well on idle just rendering the rest of the system/desktop/etc?

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You can always install Midori 0.5.11 from Jessie Backports as well. It's not a crashy mess like the old version on the repository was. For audio playback within Midori, install gstreamer as well. Firefox-ESR refuses to play most videos for some reason (on PowerPC; Intel Macs will play them just fine), but will play some. I haven't figured out why yet.

EDIT: Oh... you're running Testing. Not sure if Midori is available for that.

It's good that at least once browser seems to work. Do you have 3D acceleration enabled systemwide? Does it strain the CPU as well on idle just rendering the rest of the system/desktop/etc?

Click to expand...

Debian Testing daily netinst and Ubuntu Mate 16.04 LTS have the newer 4.x.x kernel, nouveau 1.3.1 and the same Xorg.

Debian Testing has Firefox 45 ESR , Ubuntu Mate has Firefox 47.
Both have Xombrero 1.6.4 and Luakit and Midori.

MPV on both has X265 support and seems to play 480p with no issues.

I'm focussing on these 2 as OS currently ,still have to check Midori.

If I run a LXTerminal with top running, dragging this window around spikes Xorg to 6-11% CPU which drops immediately when halting my window manipulation.

In overall Firefox starts to eat CPU quickly up to 96% when playing HTML5 360p (which it will never start playing ) or even just trying to logon to my work VPN which uses Javascript for the Juniper VPN applets so that looks to be more of a Firefox issue.

Qupzilla looks less CPU hungry except when starting HTML5 Youtube 360p playing , it plays but stutters and CPU is up to 96%.

Xombrero starts playing Youtube HTML5 360p instantly but again CPU rises to 96%.
Javascript however on Xombrero went butter smooth, almost as fast as on an Intel browser.

Unrelated but also tested no Silverlight in Firefox offcourse , and in general no Citrix Receiver ICA client.

And no screen brightness on both of them

Signing off , have to get up in 6 hours, will be off from Thursday until Monday but then I'll continue

You can always install Midori 0.5.11 from Jessie Backports as well. It's not a crashy mess like the old version on the repository was. For audio playback within Midori, install gstreamer as well. Firefox-ESR refuses to play most videos for some reason (on PowerPC; Intel Macs will play them just fine), but will play some. I haven't figured out why yet.

EDIT: Oh... you're running Testing. Not sure if Midori is available for that.

Click to expand...

Yep running Debian Testing because it's kernel is the same as Ubuntu Mate 16.04 LTS and Lubuntu 16.04 LTS as well as
nouveau to have an equal comparison.

Installed Midori 0.5.11 on both Debian Testing and Ubuntu Mate 16.04 LTS, once I buffer a bit Youtube 360p playback works but again CPU usage rises to the 90-95% region, guess it's either mesa or Youtube.

Next week I'll start again with Debian Jessie because it lacks the 3D acceleration and Lubuntu 16.04 LTS to check wether Youtube playback is the cause of the high CPU or mesa 3D acceleration.

Currently Firefox is the big loser on either OS.

On Debian Jessie/Testing I also have a weird thing where pulseaudio is shown first in Alsamixer and I must select F6 Sound By Layout to get to the headphones,speakers,PCM mixer settings .

On Ubuntu Mate I just have SoundbyLayout default with all the mixer settings.

Well I was inspired by this post and dual boot installed debian testing on my 12in aibook.

I can confirm the backlight can be changed by using that radeontool workaround. The only deviation from the steps is radeontool.c needs to have "nVidia" changed to "NVIDIA" to reflect lspci's current output. Otherwise the tool won't be able to detect the gpu.

radeontool can easily be packaged up into a script ("./backlight.sh 3") , although it needs to be run as root which is annoying. ideally though it'd be implemented in nouveau directly. Maybe one day I'll make the attempt.

The trackpad is very sensitive and seems to prefer moving vertically or horizontally but not at an angle. The mouse properties sensitivity and acceleration settings seems to have no effect. I haven't tried the cli method yet.

Well I was inspired by this post and dual boot installed debian testing on my 12in aibook.

I can confirm the backlight can be changed by using that radeontool workaround. The only deviation from the steps is radeontool.c needs to have "nVidia" changed to "NVIDIA" to reflect lspci's current output. Otherwise the tool won't be able to detect the gpu.

radeontool can easily be packaged up into a script ("./backlight.sh 3") , although it needs to be run as root which is annoying. ideally though it'd be implemented in nouveau directly. Maybe one day I'll make the attempt.

The trackpad is very sensitive and seems to prefer moving vertically or horizontally but not at an angle. The mouse properties sensitivity and acceleration settings seems to have no effect. I haven't tried the cli method yet.

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Thanks for checking the brightness work-around , will look into that also once I have more time.

I noticed indeed that under Debian Jessie/Testing the trackpad is hyper sensitive whereas under Ubuntu Mate 16.40 LTS
it is useable and adjusting the properties works.

Not yet, it's on my todo-list but since Gentoo means lots of compiling from source I will do it together with FreeBSD 11
(which I have installed once after 3 days of compiling packages ) and maybe OpenBSD 6.0.

I just followed the suggestions and built off the existing detective work in that bug report I linked earlier.

I used the NV40 initialization and get/set functions as a template but made modifications for the different registers and differences in how the values are read. Most of my time was actually setting up the build environment.

I'll post a diff file when I get a chance to clean it up if you want to see it.

I just followed the suggestions and built off the existing detective work in that bug report I linked earlier.

I used the NV40 initialization and get/set functions as a template but made modifications for the different registers and differences in how the values are read. Most of my time was actually setting up the build environment.

I'll post a diff file when I get a chance to clean it up if you want to see it.

Click to expand...

Just tried it also on Debian Testing and YES , brightness works.
I'm gone from home for the weekend so I'll check on Ubuntu Mate and Debian Jessie on Monday.

I've just had a play around with the Lubuntu 16.04 live disk on my iBook and Powerbooks and it looks promising - 720P video on the iBook with stock Gnome player (whilst running top in Terminal).
There's lots of glitches to iron out though so for the moment I'm not going to dive in with a full install but the new kernel looks promising albeit tasking the CPU more.

I just followed the suggestions and built off the existing detective work in that bug report I linked earlier.

I used the NV40 initialization and get/set functions as a template but made modifications for the different registers and differences in how the values are read. Most of my time was actually setting up the build environment.

I'll post a diff file when I get a chance to clean it up if you want to see it.

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